Tag: Blogging

At the end of April I decided to do at the end of each month a monthly recap of the month. So today is the end of May. Wow I can’t believe it is the end of May already! The month went by so quickly. It was a beautiful month. May has always been one of my favorite months. I remember celebrating May Day in school when we lived in Europe when I was younger. I always took part and I loved it.

So I guess I am going to start with my May goals and then I will also talk a bit about other things that have happened during May. I want to make this a monthly thing that I do each month more for myself then for anyone else reading just so later I can look back and see the progress I am making as well as see what happened in certain months but I think it is also interesting as a feature post that shows what is going on in my life.

May’s Goals

Walking – I had said I wanted by the end of may to be walking an hour a day and 10,000 steps a day. I am often hitting the goal for 1 hour of walking a day by walking to the bus and walking some extra stops as well as mall walking on my breaks. However as far as 10,000 steps I have learnt that 1 hour a day is not necessarily going to equal out to 10,000 steps a day. I am getting about 6500 though. Which is still much more then I was doing. As for two 5-7 km walks a week. I am getting in one 7-10 km walk a week on the weekend in. So I am not there yet but I am still considering it a win as I am doing better then I was.

Blogging – This one I am proud to say I am meeting. I think I am averaging 3 posts a week. I am writing them up on the weekend and scheduling them mostly but I am perfectly okay with that. I am still writing the posts and that takes some time and thought. I have also been playing around with themes to find one I really like. I have one I am happy with but I think I would like to use the Underscores starter theme to build and style my own theme. I already know how to build a theme from scratch but I will be honest I am too lazy too. I used to at one point but then things got a little beyond my skill level and even though I am teaching myself as I go I do not have the time I used to have to do this. I am going to start looking at tutorials.

Blood Sugar – I am proud to say I seem to really be getting some good results using my FreeStyle Libre and have been able to really limit my lows and highs and have gotten pretty decent control over my blood sugar. I am not getting nearly as many lows and my highs are getting better and I am having less of them as well. I wish I had taken pictures at the end of the month last month but I am going to be ensuring that I do that on a monthly basis and will likely add that into it’s own monthly post to help me keep track and to see the direction I am going in. Here are some screens from my FreeStyle Libre:

In the first picture you can see I have only had 8 lows over the last 30 days, which may seem like a lot but at one time I had 8 in a day so that is an improvement. In the second picture you see my average glucose levels broken up into 4 time periods. I tend to sometimes have some lows like the last picture shows when I wake up but sometimes I have some highs as well which is why the two pictures actually seem to be a bit confusing. In the third picture you see my time in target over the last 30 days, to me this is the most helpful screen as I can see that 71% of the time I am in target which I believe when I started the Libre back in March was less then 45% of the time in target. I am actually really happy with that screen and would like to aim for 80% by the end of next month. The last picture I will be honest. I don’t understand this one. I am not sure what it is showing me… if anyone knows let me know

Other things

I fell in love with my FreeStyle Libre this month. It has been a godsend! I loved it right away from the beginning but I now see as well how well it can help me control my diabetes and how I can see trends as to whether or not I am heading into a low or a high and correct it. I love that it helps keep my fingers from feeling like a pin cushion I also found out that should I need to get one at some point I could get coverage for an insulin pump. Right now my doctor wants to hold off and see how I make out with only one shot a day at night of Basaglar (a long acting insulin) and if I need to go back on a short acting insulin like NovoRapid and if so then consider a pump.

I purchased a subscription to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom because I plan on taking more pictures and going more places and as I want to get back into blogging more and designing WordPress themes eventually myself I figured it would be a good thing to invest in.

Edward and I hiked Cape Split on May 19 and it was beautiful! I got a lot of pictures which if you haven’t seen them you can see them here. I am really proud of most of them. I am really hoping to get some time to take some online tutorials/lessons on photography and learn some more about taking pictures. I have taken a lot more pictures this month then I have in a long time and we have gone on a walk or hike every weekend. The feature image for this post was from the Cape Split hike from the beautiful woods we walked through before getting to the end of the cape.

As for health I have been pretty healthy considering. I had a bad cold a week into the month and still have a cough, runny nose, etc from it but am feeling much better now and better every day. I have ran out of sick days from earlier in the year already so I am trying to rack up all the extra lieu hours I can and I since I had a lot of vacation time saved up due to going on short term and not using it I have booked off 2 long weekends each month over the summer and a whole week in August.

This one I did not blog about but Edward fell a few weeks ago and hurt himself pretty good. At least I don’t think I mentioned it. He fell at work when he was outside changing garbage’s. I thought he had done some damage to his arm because it was badly bruised and had a huge lump on his arm but it seems mostly fine now and the bruising and swelling and lump went back down. He would not go and get it checked

Dad’s 66th Birthday was last week and we went to the Casino Nova Scotia for the Prime Rib buffet. It was wonderful! I loved it. I actually did not have any prime rib or mussels (I’m allergic to mussels) but there was a ton of other stuff there, soups, salads, pizza, pork, chicken, rice pilaf, vegtables, and lots of deserts. We had a great time and then I lost $20 in less then 5 minutes at a slot machine. Edward took a bit longer, about 30 minutes Dad had a good time and so did the rest of us.

Last week as well a beloved childhood amusement ride and a part of an amusement park my parents used to take me to when we lived in Germany burnt down. The park is Europa Park in Rust, Germany. This was my favorite amusement park we visited while we lived there. The ride was called Piraten in Batvia (Pirates in Batvia) and it was completely destroyed along with some other things in the area of the ride in the Scandinavian section of the park. No one was injured that I know of but it was quite the fire that needed over 200 fire fighters to put out. The ride was apparently open and in use at the time.

If you comment on this post I would love to know one thing (or more) that happened to you in the month of May?

I am hoping next weekend we will be able to walk the Pockwock Falls in the Pockwock Wilderness Area. I still have the photos from Kejimkujik Seaside to edit in Photoshop & Lightroom but I just haven’t had the time to tackle it. I will eventually do a second part to that blog post. Hopefully there are some decent photos hiding among them. After hiking Cape Split the other day we realized we need to stick to easy ones for a little while

I really want to go take some waterfall photos so I figure it would be a good one to start with plus the photos I have seen online of the falls look pretty cool. The hike itself says it is a 3km, 1 hour return hike to the falls and is easy to moderate. So I think it will be a nice relaxing and easy hike.

I really had fun the other day but it was really to much of a hike for us both at the moment. I’ve been researching some hiking trails in mainland Nova Scotia to try and make a list of the hikes I want to do this summer. I will do another post later in the week with a list of them.

I tried doing a blog post a day on here but even writing them on the weekend and scheduling them is too hard to keep up and after the last few weeks I realized that if I am posting at least once a week I am happy with that and if I can get 2 or 3 then even better.

I am excited for next weekend. I find having specific plans for the weekend such as drives, hikes, walks, etc planned a week or two before gives me something to look forward to all week when the week gets tedious or long. It helps too that I have so much time off planed between now and September.

These photos are actually old photos I found on my camera when I was getting it ready to go to Peggy’s Cove the other day. They are from October 16, 2016. I did a quick search on my blog and don’t think that they were ever added here. Sadly for me I can not take credit for the first two. My lovely husband seems to have a better eye then I do when it comes to photography sometimes. I suppose I should be proud of that fact

I remember the drive. It was a beautiful sunny fall day, as is obvious from the photos but it was very cold out. I remember wanting to go for a wanting to get out and walk around Mahone Bay but deciding against it because it was too cold. Later in Lunenburg we did decide to get out and walk around a little bit but it didn’t last long because if I remember correctly I didn’t bring a jacket with me just a thin sweatshirt, dumb on my part.

This first picture I remember Edward asking my randomly along the way to stop because he saw something he wanted to take a picture of.

Then I decided I wanted to go see if we could get some good shots from across the bay from Mahone Bay and again Eddie wanted to take the picture so I let him and this was the result:

This was around Gold River. I am not sure why but I am absolutely in love with old stone railway bridges. I have photographed this bridge from both sides and different angles plenty of times.

This is Lunenburg Academy which was built between 1893 and 1895 after the old Lunenburg Academy was destroyed by fire in 1893. It’s the only surviving intact 19th century Academy building left in Nova Scotia and is a beautiful building.

I hope to get back to Mahone Bay and Lunenburg this summer and take some more pictures. I know if the fall and winter Mahone Bay has a Scarecrow and a Father Christmas Festival. I have taken photos at the Scarecrow festival before but I have never seen the Father Christmas one and would love to go this year and take some pictures.